Healthcare Analyst 

Flow-FX LLC

Mentors 

Patrick Sweeney MD — Founder and CEO
Ryan Wright — VP of Business Development

Background

Flow-FX LLC is a medical device start-up focused on medical devices for delivering medicine to bone. Two product lines, Flow-Nail and Flow-Screw, are 510k cleared by the FDA for fracture fixation and delivery of injectable bone void fillers. Recently an off-label usage of the Flow-Screw enabled the delivery of antibiotics intraosseously to the site of chronic infection in an elderly diabetic patient that had failed previous treatment including partial resection of the infected calcaneus (heel). After 10 days of treatment by local delivery of antibiotics through the Flow-Screw, infection was no longer detectable. We hypothesize that circumventing the diseased peripheral arteries allow therapeutic levels of medication to be achieved.

This offers a new modality to treat chronic diabetic osteomyelitis which is a world-wide healthcare problem. It also points to a new treatment for post traumatic osteomyelitis which is a major problem throughout the developing world and in battlefield injuries of our soldiers.

Internship Description

During the course of this internship, you will develop an economic healthcare savings model for a new diabetic osteomyelitis treatment.  This cost-consequence model will be developed from a national and international perspective, evaluating the clinical benefits of increased treatment success along with subsequent decreased amputations, hospital stay, debridement surgeries, wound care and extended antibiotic delivery.

Access to surgeons, wound clinics and hospital personnel can be arranged if helpful.

Specific Objectives

• Cost- Benefit Analysis for US and international healthcare through adoption of more successful treatment methods for diabetic osteomyelitis.
• Recommendations for clinical research design to evaluate the new methods’ success in comparison to current norms.
• Final product worthy of being presented by intern in various national forums.
• Final product worthy of submission to appropriate journals with intern as first author.

Qualifications

• Current Graduate student or postdoctoral trainee
• Interest in public health policy or the field of medicine
• Strong work ethic and ability to work independently while incorporating advice of mentors.
• Well-developed verbal and written communication skills.
• Demonstrated data analytical skills.

Useful but not required

• Previous clinical medicine exposure
• Bilingual English/Spanish